Nearly 30% of all Illinois voters have already cast their ballot

Nearly 30% of Illinois registered voters already have cast a ballot via early voting, vote-by-mail or grace-period voting.

That’s according to figures released Monday afternoon by the Illinois State Board of Elections.

As of noon Monday, election officials throughout the state had reported collecting 2,384,887 ballots from 8,125,383 registered voters. Of those ballots, 1,520,513 were early votes, 832,898 were vote-by-mail and another 31,476 were grace-period voters.

In 2020, more than 2 million votes were cast by mail because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, election officials are reporting only about 1.2 million vote-by-mail ballots were requested by voters.

Among the suburbs in the Daily Herald circulation area, Kane County leads with 40.1% of voters already casting a ballot, followed by 39.6% of McHenry County voters. DuPage County is reporting 38% of voters there have already cast ballots, while 33.9% of Lake County voters have done so as well. In Will County, 33% of voters have already cast a ballot, while 30.7% of suburban Cook County voters have voted ahead of Election Day.

Vote-by-mail and grace-period voting data by county wasn’t immediately available for the past two presidential election cycles. However, in-person early voting is slightly off pace from 2020, records show. Those figures may have also been inflated due to the pandemic, election officials suggested.

Among suburban Cook County registered voters in 2016, 24.8% voted early. That figure climbed to 27.1% in 2020. Currently, 22.8% have taken advantage of early voting.

In DuPage County, 17.7% of registered voters voted early in 2016. In 2020, that figure was up to 29.7%. So far this year, 25.6% have voted early in person.

For Kane County, in-person early voters in 2016 were 29.4% of registered voters. In 2020 it jumped to 31.4%. Currently, state figures show 27% of voters there voted early.

Lake County reported 21.5% of registered voters voted early in 2016 compared to 25.5% in 2020. So far this year, 21% voted early there.

In McHenry County, 18.9% of registered voters in 2016 chose to vote early. By 2020, that number had spiked to 28.9%. Currently, the figure sits at 26.9% for this election cycle.

Just 15.4% of Will County’s registered voters voted early in 2016, according to election records. In 2020, that climbed to 24%. This year so far, 22.9% of registered voters have chosen in-person early voting.

All told, more than 1.25 million suburban early voting ballots have been cast, state records show. Another 377,191 have voted by mail, while another 3,582 took advantage of grace-period voting.